Labor Department

Carl Fillichio, Senior Adviser, Communications and Public Affairs

The department might want to designate a lifetime parking spot for Fillichio at the Frances Perkins Building. Now Labor's spokesman, he got his start as a young department press aide during President Clinton's first term. He stayed on through the second term to work with Secretary Alexis Herman, and he became so indispensable that in 2001, President Bush's incoming Labor secretary, Elaine Chao, asked him to stick around to ease the transition. Fillichio, 49, grew up "with one foot in Chicago and the other foot in South Florida." He earned his bachelor's degree at John Carroll University in Cleveland. Before joining the Clinton Labor Department, he worked for several public-relations firms. More recently, he was a senior vice president of Lehman Brothers in New York City before returning in 2009 to work with Secretary Hilda Solis. As the top Labor spokesman, Fillichio has coordinated crisis communications after prominent workplace disasters such as the explosions at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the Upper Big Branch mine. And while media outlets criticized him in 2012 when he proposed tightening security procedures surrounding the department's release of economic data under embargo, he has since been commended for those efforts. The National Association of Government Communicators honored Fillichio earlier this year, praising "his unwavering commitment to protecting the integrity of the department's sensitive economic data."